As Turkey Attacks Kurds is an Islamist Alliance Being Prepared to Take Control of a Syrian “Safe Zone”.

Around 260 members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) have been killed and hundreds more wounded in Ankara’s week-long campaign of air strikes against targets of the outlawed group inside Turkey and in northern Iraq, the semi-official Anadolu Agency said on Aug. 1.

Without citing its sources, Anadolu said that among those wounded was Nurettin Demirtaş, the brother of the co-leader of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas.

Ankara has launched a two-pronged anti-terror offensive against Islamic State of Iraq and the LEvant (ISIL) jihadists in Syria and the outlawed PKK militants in northern Iraq and inside Turkey after a wave of attacks in the country.

Taz notes that the Turkish air strikes have hit the Syrian YPG (the heroic defenders of Kobane).

Turkey has “joined the war against ISIS”, according to US politicians and the corporate media after a July 23 deal between the US and the Turkish government. The deal gives US war planes and drones access to Turkey’s Incirlik airbase from which to conduct air strikes in Syria and Iraq.

The reality is very different. The US and NATO have actually given a green light to Turkish air strikes against the most effective resistance to ISIS — the left-wing Kurdish-led forces.

They have also foreshadowed supporting Turkish plans to create a buffer zone occupied by Turkish soldiers or Islamist proxies in Rojava (Syrian Kurdistan). Turkey’s aim is to achieve what ISIS — also known as ISIL or IS — failed to do: prevent the spread of the liberated area of Rojava under the left-wing Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration.

Ignoring growing evidence of collusion between the Turkish state and ISIS, the US hailed the Turkish state’s recent crackdown on leftist and Kurdish activists as a “crackdown on terrorism”.

In fact, this response to Turkey’s repression of the forces actually in the front line against ISIS reveals the West’s “War on ISIS” as a lie.

SPIEGEL: The Turkish government says it is fighting all “terrorists” equally. Why do you view their approach primarily as a campaign against Kurds?

Demirtas: Take, for instance, the number of people arrested in raids across Turkey recently. How many members of IS were among them? A few dozen? On the other hand, more than a thousand Kurds were arrested, particularly youths, on the grounds that they were PKK supporters. These figures say it all.

SPIEGEL: Were you expecting this to happen after the election?

Demirtas: I wouldn’t have put anything past Erdogan before the election, no matter how crazy. He is perfectly capable of setting the whole country on fire if it means maintaining his grip on power. We have been witnessing a worrying shift for some time now. The democracy that we so painstakingly achieved in Turkey is eroding. It is getting worse by the day.

Readers of French can read this important article on the site of Ensemble (the third largest group in the Front de gauche) on the details of the HDP’s political stand

A Habur, the border crossing between Turkey and Iraq, it has been six days that the families of thirteen YPG fighters killed in action against bands Daesh, have been waiting for the Turkish state to allow them to take back bodies of their relatives.

Yesterday, July 31, unable to wait any longer, families of fallen combatants have demonstrated for the bodies of their relatives in order to organsie their funnerals. The Turkish forces of repression responded with tear gas and water cannons to the request from families already grieving the loss of loved ones.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkish fighter jets launched a fresh attack against Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) on Saturday, killing 10 civilians and injuring 11 others in the Qandil Mountains of the Kurdistan region, a Rudaw reporter at the scene said.

“We were all sleeping when the Turkish fighter jets bombarded our village,” Ismail Abdula Ghader, one of the injured civilians,said by phone this morning. The bombing targeted Zargali village in Rawanduz district, which is on the outskirt of the Qandil Mountains. The PKK was used the area as a stronghold for many years.

Ghader said the fighter jets dropped bombs over the civilians’ houses and killed six civilians instantly and injured seven others.

The Hurriyet Daily News reported Friday an intelligence source saying that 30 F-16 warplanes shelled 130 targets in the Qandil Mountains both inside the Turkey and in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

The source also claimed that Turkish airstrikes have killed 190 PKK guerrillas and injured at least 300 others. The PKK has previously confirmed the death of four members because of the recent aerial attacks in Qandil.

Turkey claims its attacks are “in retaliation” for the killings of two Turkish police officers last week, for which the PKK claimed responsibility.

The latest conflict has possibly brought to a halt a peace agreement reached between Ankara and the PKK two years ago.

Since July 24, Turkish air force jets and artillery have kept up a wave of attacks against the PKK, including five rounds of airstrikes on Saturday that targeted the Qandil Mountains.